


An Unproductive Search

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-28
Updated: 2018-09-28
Packaged: 2019-07-18 18:08:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16123946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: A child is missing from a camp site





	An Unproductive Search

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2018 sentinel bingo prompt 'lost'
> 
> Warning - no archive warnings apply, but it is rather downbeat.

An Unproductive Search

by Bluewolf

Jim and Blair mostly preferred to camp 'wild' - that is, away from organized camp sites. They had their chosen spots, places where they knew they would have privacy, peace and, above all, quiet; sometimes an organized site was very noisy, with screaming children running around - strange, Jim often thought, how children from technological societies tended to be noisy, while children from 'primitive' tribes were quiet; he didn't remember ever hearing screaming children while he was in Peru. Of course, even the very young children in those tribes were quick to learn that noise attracted predators and that it was safer to remain quiet.

There were one or two places, however, where wild camping wasn't permitted, or wasn't practical, and if they wanted to go to those areas, they had to use a 'proper', organized site. One of those places was close to a surfing beach Jim liked to visit three or four times a year. He was prepared to put up with the noise to get in some surfing, and they were there for a week.

Blair had tried surfing, but found that he didn't enjoy it. So when the urge to go surfing hit Jim, Blair went along but took with him plenty of reading material. Sometimes he took a walk along the beach, but mostly he just sat reading for the fun of it - something he rarely had time to do. And if he was concentrating on what he was reading, he was mostly unaware of the noise.

They were part-way through breakfast on their second full day there when they heard the sound of approaching sirens and three vehicles drove into the camp site and stopped at the warden's office.

Jim was aware of watchers from the various tents and caravans as he listened; and stiffened. "Chief - there's a child missing. Seems to have vanished overnight."

They looked at each other, then without a word spoken, they both rose and headed over to the office.

The man speaking to the warden looked at them as they approached. "Nothing to concern you, gentlemen."

Jim was already pulling out his identification. "Detective Ellison, Cascade PD - my colleague, Detective Sandburg. You wouldn't be here, sirens running, if there wasn't a problem. Can we help?"

"Eric Milner, Search and Rescue. We don't know yet if there actually is a problem; we got a call this morning from a couple here - their seven-year-old daughter disappeared during the night. They put her to bed as usual last night; she wasn't there this morning."

"Someone abducted her?"

"It's possible. Ah - looks like these are the parents."

Jim glanced around.

The couple looked very mismatched for age. The man looked to be about forty, perhaps a little older; but the woman didn't look nearly old enough to have a seven-year-old daughter - unless she had given birth in her early teens. A step-mother then? Possible. But she certainly looked upset.

"Thanks for coming so quickly," the man said as he reached them.

"Still no sign of your daughter, then, Mr. Hilliard?"

"No."

"Where could she have gone?" The woman - Mrs. Hilliard - sounded as if it wouldn't take much to make her collapse in hysterics. "And why?"

"You haven't been aware of anyone... well, watching her while you've been here?" Milner asked.

"You think Julie might have been targeted by... by... by a pedophile?" Hilliard gasped.

"It could happen," Milner said gently. "And in some ways that seems more likely than she woke up and decided to go for a walk in the middle of the night, and got lost."

"She does have a history of sleep-walking," Hilliard said, "but it's at least a year since she last sleep-walked, as far as we know. It worried my ex-wife, but the doctor she spoke to about it said Julie would outgrow it."

"Divorced? And you got custody?" Milner asked.

Hilliard shook his head. "My first wife died a little over a year ago. Cancer. But it didn't seem a good idea to have Julie living alone with a step father; I felt Julie needed a mother there too, Pearl is - was - Jane's cousin and we'd always been good friends, and Pearl loved Julie... we agreed that getting married was the best thing we could do for Julie."

"You're just a step father?"

"Yes - but I've felt like her father for four years."

"Right," Milner said. "We have enough men here for a search." He looked over to Jim and Blair. "Will you come with us?"

"Of course!" Jim replied.

But the search found nothing. And although the men went out every day for a week, they still found nothing.

On the fifth day, Milner called off the search. He spoke very apologetically to the Hilliards, saying that the odds now on finding the child alive were very slim, and suggesting that she had probably fallen into the sea and drowned. "We'll report it, of course, and if a child's body is washed up on the shore to the north - the prevailing current would carry it north - it will be reported to us immediately. I'm very sorry."

"We've got to keep looking!" Hilliard said.

"You should go home," Milner said. "Your wife is exhausted. You've done everything a concerned parent could do. But my experience says that there's no way we'll find Julie alive here. We've searched the ground over and over and found nothing. Either she was abducted - and it's easy for an abductor to carry a sleeping child out of a tent - or she has to have ended up in the water. If you carry on searching you're just rubbing salt into the wound. Give yourselves a break."

The Hilliards packed up - slowly, reluctantly - then got into their SUV and drove away. Meanwhile the searchers were also packing everything up. Milner crossed to speak to Jim and Blair.

"Thanks for your help," he said.

"You think the kid was abducted?" Jim asked.

"I think that even sleepwalking, the kid would have been wakened at the shock of ending up in the sea, and yelled," Milner said.

"Unless she simply walked into the sea, adjusted to the cold as she went deeper, walked out of her depth and been swept away. If she wakened then and yelled, who would have heard her as anything other than a night flying bird?" Blair asked.

Milner sighed. "Well, unless someone north of here finds a body on the beach, I think she’s going to join the ranks of the mysterious disappeared," he said. "Never good, and in the case of a kid... I know the Hilliards are just step-parents, but from the way they reacted, they really need closure."

"If you do hear anything, could you let us know?" Jim asked. "Major Crime, Cascade PD, central precinct."

Milner nodded. "Are you going home today?"

"Yes," Jim said.

Milner stuck his hand out. "Well, thanks again for your help."

He shook Jim's hand, then Blair's, turned and walked away.

***

During the following week, they heard nothing, nor was there anything in the paper about a body being found on the beach anywhere on the west coast.

As they went home on Friday night, Blair said, "I'd like to go back and spend another day searching for Julie. Because it occurs to me - nobody went looking any distance south down the beach."

"Chief, the current runs northward - "

"Yes, but everyone knows that. If she was abducted, maybe raped and then murdered, her body could be hidden a mile or two to the south - but even hidden, you'd smell it."

And so they quickly packed and headed for the camp site they had used the previous week.

***

In the morning, after a quick breakfast, they headed down the beach, southwards.

Not that it stayed a beach for long. The tide, fortunately, had turned not long before and was going out; they soon found themselves splashing through shallow water as they rounded low outcrops of rock, outcrops that weren't quite high enough to be called cliffs but were high enough to be awkward to scramble over.

"We'll have to watch how far we go," Jim said, "if we're not to be trapped by an incoming tide."

"We could probably climb high enough to be safe then, once it starts going out again, get back to camp before it gets dark," Blair said.

They made it round the next outcrop of rocks clear of the water, to find themselves on another small beach. "This would make a nice picnic spot," Blair said, "if it wasn't for the tide."

But Jim wasn't paying attention. His head was up, and he was sniffing. "Do you smell that?" he asked.

"Jim, I don't have your sense of smell," Blair said with exaggerated patience. "What is it?"

"Decay... over here."

***

The body, close to the cliff backing the small beach, seemed to have been buried not too deep under the sand, but the waves had washed a lot of the sand away.

"Mightn't be Julie, but we need to report it," Jim said unnecessarily. Blair already had his cell phone out and was dialing 911.

A helicopter appeared inside half an hour. Jim was already halfway down the beach, and began waving the moment he knew the pilot would have a clear view of him.

It landed, and they were not surprised when Milner jumped down from it.

"Ellison!" he exclaimed. "You found a body?"

"It occurred to Blair that the search of the shore had been directed north because of the prevailing current, and we decided to come back this weekend and have a walk southwards... " He was already leading Milner over to where Blair was sitting on a rock close to the body, carefully not looking at it.

"We didn't touch it," Jim added.

Milner took one look and pulled out his cell phone.

***

Within another hour, Forensics was swarming over the scene.

Leaving them to it, Jim, Blair and Milner sat on rocks out of the way, talking until they were called over.

The Forensics team had uncovered the body. Everyone but Blair gathered round as they studied it.

It was immediately clear that it was the body of a young girl. And although the child had clearly been dead for several days, there were bruise marks surprisingly obvious on her neck. "She's been strangled," Jim said.

Blair, meanwhile, had been looking at the sand where she had been buried, rather than look directly at the child. Suddenly he drew in a sharp breath, and dropped to his knees, peering at the sand. "Does anyone have an evidence bag?"

One of the Forensic technicians moved the two steps to join him, holding one out.

Blair pointed. Just obvious was something glinting in the sun. The technician - who was already wearing gloves - reached down and picked up an earring that was almost totally hidden by the sand. He dropped it carefully into the bag.

Jim looked at it, then at a very white-faced Blair. "Well spotted, Chief."

"Jim - last week... Mrs. Hilliard was wearing a single earring that matched that one. I didn't say anything at the time - some people do wear just a single earring - but I thought it was beautiful, and that it was a pity she'd chosen to wear just one of the pair."

"You do realize what you're saying, Detective Sandburg?" Milner asked.

"Yes. This is evidence that the Hilliards themselves were responsible for Julie's disappearance. God, they seemed so upset... "

***

When questioned, Pearl Hilliard collapsed almost at once. "Julie... She was very perceptive, but not old enough to hide what she knew. Don and I... we'd been lovers for a while, and she knew it. She... she didn't tell her mother, because she knew Jane was dying and she didn't want to upset her... but after Don and I married... She made it clear that she hated us.

"After she fell asleep that night... Don strangled her... We knew the current ran north so we took her body south a couple of miles and buried her. We didn't think anyone would think of searching to the south... but if they did and she was found... there was always the 'abducted' possibility... Yes, Julie was my niece and I loved her... but with her gone Don and I could make a new life together...

"I didn't realize I'd lost an earring till we got home - but I could have lost it anywhere."

"It never occurred to you that a man who'd cheated on one wife could easily cheat on a second one?" Blair asked.

"He... He always said that if he'd met me first... "

Blair shook his head. "Oh, a lot of men do take their marriage vows seriously but the male of almost every species is hard wired to mate with as many different females as possible, and he'll lie through his teeth to get them all to trust him. It takes a lot of will power to resist that urge."

Pearl drew a long, sobbing breath.

"Whose idea was it to kill Julie?" Milner asked, surprisingly gently.

"Don's." She collapsed in tears, no longer able to maintain any kind of control.

The one good thing - if it could be called 'good' - that emerged from the whole nasty affair was that June Hilliard had in fact died of cancer, and not had her death hastened by her husband.

***

Sentenced to life for the murder of his step-daughter, Don Hilliard served only a few months before he was found lying dead in his cell, the marks on his neck showing that he had been strangled.

Notified of the death, the warden simply shook his head. Whatever the other prisoners had done to land them in prison, no inmate had any sympathy for a man who killed a child.

Pearl Hilliard, who had been given a suspended sentence, was found dead two days later when she failed to report to her probation officer. A note found beside her body said simply that she couldn't live with the guilt of not trying to keep her husband from killing Julie.

But Blair - who was more of a realist than Jim had once believed - was convinced that someone, probably related to one of the prisoners who had killed her husband, had also killed her, disguising the killing as suicide.

Neither Jim nor Blair wanted to pursue things further. They were satisfied that justice had been done, and Julie could now rest in peace.


End file.
